Dear Starbucks:

On behalf of all of us who believe that the United States is much, more more than a Christian nation, I want to extend my warmest gratitude to you for showing us some sensitivity, and standing up for the Red, White & Blue.

Your Red Holiday cups are a stroke of genius, because they were NOT a tribute to Jesus, or anything that could be remotely identified with Jesus—such as snowflakes, candy canes, reindeer, snowmen and, or course, Christmas trees. As a Jew, I appreciate this. I am guessing there are millions of American Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Atheists , people who don’t eat candy canes, and yes—even many Christians—who feel the same way.

Every year, between Halloween and Christmas, we Jews are expected to go silently into the night, and smile politely while commerce and Christianity meld into one brand over every form of media and at most retail outlets. In fact, even Starbucks offers red and green-packaged ground coffee in “Merry Christmas” packaging.  When non-Jews toss us a bone of recognition around Hanukkah (like Starbucks’ own blue-packaged “Holiday” grinds)  we’re expected to feel grateful for the kindling of even the faintest light of acknowledgement—kind of like we’ve been forgiven once again for the death of Jesus, something we were never responsible for in the first place. Er….thanks, but no thanks. We’ll burn our own Menorah candles at both ends, thank you.

Ironically, the day there was such a brew-haha over your Red-suited Starbucks cups just happened to be the 77^th Anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of the Broken Glass”, when Nazi’s and their sympathizers, smashed the storefront windows of Jewish merchants throughout Germany because they were…well, Jewish. It would not have surprised me at all to see some of the same Fundamentalist fanatics crazily critical of Starbuck’s Red menace, to have smashed the windows of Starbucks stores across the nation. That’s essentially what they tried to use social media to do. It’s so much neater that way, and they can’t get arrested for viral vandalism.

Apparently, what these Redcup-haters fail to recognize is that America is NOT a Christian nation, nor has it ever been since its’ inception. In fact, the country was founded, and the U.S. Constitution was adopted, to specially prevent having ANY state sanctioned religion.

As a free nation, we even fought two World Wars against such narrow-minded fanaticism and forced beliefs, and we’re fighting a war on worldwide terror for the same reasons. My father, a practicing Catholic, fought in one of those World Wars, and my wife’s uncle, an observant American Jew, died fighting for religious & cultural freedom against Fascist forces. Lost in the Deified design disagreement over a drink holder made of cardboard, was a Red, White & Blue program expanded by Starbucks for Veterans who have risked their lives to protect the freedom to practice the religion of our choice, or no religion at all.

According to the Washington Post, Starbucks not only used RedCup day to unveil its commitment to hire more veterans and military spouses, but also announced the expansion of its employee College Achievement Plan to cover the full tuition for a spouse or child of a veteran or active duty service member. Starbucks noted that it has hired some 5,500 Veterans & military spouses since 2013, more than halfway toward its goal of hiring 10,000 current or former service members or their spouses by 2018.

So, I salute you, Starbucks for your consideration of those of us who don’t celebrate Christmas, and respect the right of people who do. I also want to congratulate you for reinforcing the finest in human values, by generously giving back to our Veterans and their families, a small measure of how much they’ve given to all of us.

I’d say your Red, White & Blue spirit is enough to fill anyone’s cup—regardless of color, design or religious denomination.

Sincerely,

Steve Villano

Dear Hillary:

Let me start by wishing you a Happy 68th Birthday! Not that I could have somehow ignored your birthday since I have received, by this morning’s email, at least 68 reminders that it’s your birthday, including one from Chelsea and one from Bill.
Where I come from, which is Brooklyn, New York, it is considered tacky, however, to send out reminders to strangers to give you money on your birthday. I can see my mother shaking her head right now: “Who does that?”, she’d ask? She was a beautiful, innocent,extraordinarily intelligent, peasant Italian woman who never understood politicians, even when I became one and worked with Mario Cuomo.

But, I didn’t write to talk about money. Lord knows, you’ve been blessed with plenty now, even though you never got a measly million dollar loan from your father to start off life, the way Donald Trump did. Poor Donald. People would really feel sorry for his hard knocks life if they knew that the money his father gave him came from taxpayers. His father, you see, made his little fortune by building low and middle-income housing with federal money. Imagine that: the great and powerful Donald building his stupendous wealth on the backs of working people like my mother and father. I can see my mother shaking her head right now.

I am happy that you’ve had a wonderful week leading up to your birthday, Hillary. You sparkled in the Democratic Debate, Joe Biden decided he didn’t have enough time to mount a campaign for President, and you battled back the dark forces of Cray Cray Trey Gowdy (aka:Lucius Malfoy & Timothy McVeigh combined), and the Benghazi Committee. You have that Presidential glow about you, and you’ve done it all on your own, without any grease or hair gel being applied by your husband. So why are you defending his callous and politically calculated decisions on DOMA, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell & Needle Exchange, which he has admitted were among the biggest mistakes of his Presidency. You owe him nothing.

Your slippery arguments over the last few days defending Bill’s dumb decision to support DOMA sounds like it came right from the playbook of his male advisors who helped you lose the 2008 Democratic Nomination to Barack Obama. It was NOT the best of all available options, as you mea culpa-ed. The best option was to vote NO on DOMA, since as you knew at the time, it was unconstitutional and a 14th Amendment violation. Don’t make excuses for his inexcusable behavior. Just tell the truth and say it was a dumb, overly political, cruel calculation that effected millions of lives.

Same thing on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. NO ONE ASKED him to do it; it was not the “best” of all the options, since no other options were on the table. He created DADT out of half-cloth, which he favored using a lot, as you know. Again, millions of people suffered real harm and discrimination because he didn’t have the nerve to fight for what was right. Don’t copy his cowardice.

Finally, PLEASE don’t even think about making excuses for Bill’s triangulated strangulation of the lives of People with HIV by his failure to fight for a federal needle exchange program to fight AIDS, even though he knew all the science was clearly on the side of needle exchange. He caved into to right-wing know nothings/feel nothings on that huge public health issue. I heard him give his Mea Culpa on his needle exchange “mistake” at the International AIDS Conference in Toronto, and I threw up in the aisle of the convention hall because I knew his cave-in had caused peoples deaths. Don’t you dare defend him on this.

Hillary, I like you; I really like you. I’ve always liked you more than I cared for your husband. You never insulted all Italian-Americans, as he did. I admired your work on the Senate Watergate Committee, your lifetime of leadership on behalf on early childhood education, and your unyielding commitment to the Children’s Defense Fund. I voted for you twice as my Senator from NY, and my biggest disappointment was when you supported the War in Iraq, despite the fact that you knew the Bush bums were lying to all of us.

I want to vote for you for many good, positive reasons–not the least of which is that I want my granddaughters to grow up with a smart, humane woman as their President–especially one who with a solid record in support of social justice and equal rights. I think that, like their mother who is a professor, you’ll be a great role model.

So, I’m asking you–grandparent to grandparent–not to screw this up. Don’t continue to make excuses for your husband’s unconscionable actions. He’s history. You are the future: be positive, be generous, be bold and keep fighting to make this world deserving of our children and grandchildren. Do that, Hillary, and you’ve got my vote.

Sincerely,
Steve Villano

Less than three weeks after Yogi Berra’s death, another Yankee demi-icon (or is it “dummy icon”)–Don Mattingly–proved something that’s clear to many of us in high school: many athletes are dumb, but some are profoundly stupid & self-centered.

In the aftermath of the Ugly Utley sliding assault which broke the leg of New York Met’s shortstop Ruben Tejada, LA Dodger Manager Don Mattingly compounded a terrible display of unsportsmanlike conduct and naked aggression with stupidity and ingratitude. Mattingly, a Yankee hero for many years in New York whose solid, non-championship play earned him the nickname “Donnie Baseball,” whined to the LA Times that everybody was picking on Utley and the Dodgers because they weren’t New York.

“If it would have been their guy, they would be saying, `David Wright, hey, he’s a gamer. He went after him. That’s the way you gotta play,’ ” Mattingly said. “But it’s our guy. It’s different.”

Wait, Dumb Donnie was just warming up.

“I know how … the New York media gets a little bit going and it gets dramatic,” Mattingly said. “But for me you can’t have it both ways. If David would have done it, it wouldn’t have been any problem here in New York.”

Yes, Don Mattingly does know how the New York Media gets. After all, the fawning, sycophantic coverage of Mattingly by the New York sports media helped perpetuate the “Donny Baseball” myth, for a player who never won a World Series and, as the alleged team leader and captain of the Yankees, led his team to precisely zero World Championships. In 14 years.

As a die-hard Yankee fan, who watched the self-obsessed Mattingly play in dozens of games at Yankee Stadium from 1982-1995, it was infuriating how many times this .307 lifetime hitter would swing for a single, when only an extra-base hit or home run would do. Mattingly maddeningly played “small ball”, and it reflected his lackluster leadership of the Yankees during 14 seasons. He lacked the Derek Jeter quality of grit and team-centeredness that made the Yankees into a world class championship team, again and again. He lacked the grace, big-game sense and fan-friendliness of his successor, Tino Martinez. In fact, in half as many years with the Yankees–seven–Tino hit almost as many home runs (192) as Mattingly’s paltry total of 222 round-trippers over 14 years. In that same seven year stint with the Yankees, Tino helped lead the team to four (count ‘em, Donny Baseball, FOUR) World Championships with more than 700 RBI– only 300 less than Mattingly mustered in twice as many years. Tino got it–it wasn’t all about him; Mattingly didn’t. And Tino never once got nasty with fans nor with the press, was never an ungrateful boor, nor defended the ugly tactics of anyone like Chase Utley. Baseball was a sport he loved, and he respected the humanity of his teammates and of players on other teams. In Tino Martinez’ high-class playbook, misplaced aggression had no place on the field.

Not so, Don Mattingly.

“I look at it as a baseball play,” Mattingly said before Utley’s suspension was announced. “It was a hard, aggressive, legal slide to me. “Our organization is proud of the way Chase plays. We love the way he plays. He’s got a reputation for playing the game right, playing it hard, and we’re behind him 100 percent.”

Just like Mattingly was once behind the New York fans and media 100 percent–which was never. So here’s the guy canonized by Yankee fans for being a work-a-day player, and promoted to LA Dodger coach by then-Dodger Manager Joe Torre because Torre felt sorry that Donny Baseball never won a World Championship while he was with the Yankees. So how does the ingrate respond in his first national test as a big-league manager in the playoffs? He attacks the fans and the media of New York who lionized him for his leaderless play, during the longest Championship drought in the history of the New York Yankees.

Seems like “Dummy Baseball” is a more appropriate name for the Dodger Manager who is still clueless about leadership.

I walked into the locker room, right behind Yogi Berra. The young catcher putting on his shin guards, looked up to see what all the fuss was about. His mouth dropped open. Yogi extended his hand.

“Hey kid, how ya doing?”

“F-F-Fine,” the incredulous 19-year old catcher for the Utica Blue Sox said, shaking Yogi’s hand.

“Wanna few tips, before you take the field?” Yogi asked the kid.

“Sure,” the minor-league ballplayer said, still unable to believe his eyes.

Yogi sat down next to the kid on the thin wooden bench in the New York Penn League locker room of the Utica Blue Sox. He picked up the kids catcher’s mitt, talked about handling the glove, about positioning his body behind home plate, and staying loose throughout the game. It was the most animated and talkative Yogi was all day.

We were together since lunch time: Yogi, me and his slick public relations handler. We traveled to Utica, New York, representing the Mickey Mantle Foundation for Organ Donation and were slated to throw out the first ball at the Utica Blue Sox home game that evening, on a night dedicated to Organ Donation awareness. Mantle died the year before from Kidney failure, and his family established the Foundation in his memory, to educate the public about the dire shortage of organs available for transplantation in this country. I got involved as a VP from Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, a public academic medical center with one of the biggest organ donation programs in the country serving a community of mostly African and Caribbean-Americans. Within weeks of Mantle’s death in 1995, I contacted the Foundation and invited them to get involved in Brooklyn, where, among Blacks, the organ shortage was even more severe, thanks to cultural and religious fears.

The original purpose for Yogi’s trip to Utica was not so altruistic. He was offered $15,000 to come and sign baseball paraphernalia at the Turning Stone Casino in Verona, NY, a half-hour drive west from Utica. The Mantle family asked Yogi to do the Blue Sox event that night since he would be in the area. When he agreed, the Foundation asked me to join him.

I met Yogi and his handler at the Turning Point Resort’s restaurant for a private lunch, with representatives of the Casino and the Blue Sox. Usually, I can “carry on a conversation with a door,” my wife is fond of saying, but all Yogi was interested in doing was eating the plate of pasta placed in front of him. A life-long Yankee fan, I tried talking about Yogi’s playing days with Mickey Mantle. Yogi offered little beyond grunts of “Yep,” or “Nope,” between bites of food. I looked at him and saw my old Uncle Mike Bavoso, stocky, balding, hair growing out of his ears, gobbling down his pasta “while it was still steaming hot.”

I asked him how he felt when the Pirates’ Bill Mazerowski hit the game-winning home run over the left field fence in the 7th game of the 1960 World Series, and he stood watching it go out, playing left field for the Yankees. To me, as an 11-year old Yankee fanatic, it was a heartbreaking, life-searing moment, leaving me in tears as I watched on our black & white TV in my family’s living room in North Babylon, NY.

“That was it,” Yogi said, ripping a piece of bread and soaking up the remaining tomato sauce in his bowl. That was all he said.

At the Casino, Yogi sat for hours signing photos, baseballs, bats, anything fans brought him to sign. In the days before cellphones and selfies, anyone wanting a photo WITH Yogi had to pay extra. His handler was very strict on this point. Yogi, just grinned and went with the flow.

We were driven in a stretch limo over to Donovan Stadium at Murname Field in Utica to be there ahead of the Blue Sox ballgame, meet the players and go through our intros. On the way to the ballpark, I sat across from Yogi and tried once more to make small talk.

“Tell me about the play when Jackie Robinson stole home in the ’55 Series, Yogi,” I asked.

“He was out,” Yogi said. And with that, the small-talk game was over.

Hanging out with Yogi for a full-day, watching his warmth with a young, minor-league catcher, standing on the pitcher’s mound with Yogi Berra at a ballpark in Utica when he threw out the first-ball was all very cool. But years of yammering for Yogi, and yearning to meet the Great # 8, disappeared as quickly as the plate of pasta Yogi polished off for lunch.

Gentle waves, dead child;

Not free from war, nor hunger.

Gentle child, dead world.